Happy Canuck Turkey Day

[petronia]

ごく普通 sort of Thanksgiving weekend - not for me, actually, but generally speaking. Raked some leaves, made stuffing (complicated recipe but came out well). Read Christine de Pisan's The Book of the City of Ladies from Fio's shipment, a sort of 14th-century feminist tract that retells and subtly reexamines stories from Boccaccio, hair-raising lives of legendary female martyrs, and so forth. It made for lively intelligent reading but the cumulative effect was exactly like that of the Siennese Quattrocento rooms at the National Gallery in London - I think that was a temporary exhibit anyhow? - an excursion into a worldview that by current standards seems curiously... flattened. XD There were the same subjects presented in the same way: Patient Griselda or the Rape of the Sabine Women, in which Romulus and Remus are "brave knights" who invited their neighbouring "barons" to a "joust" thereby carrying off their daughters and fleeing back to their "castle".

Take a photo of Britney Spears posed as the Holy Virgin these days and you're called postmodern, not premodern.

(I read Boccaccio as a teen - I think it may have been in Shanghai - at which point I realised I'd already encountered a great number of the Decameron stories in folk variations, from the Italian fairy tales collected by Italo Calvino and translated into Chinese. So in a way I was into Calvino even earlier than I was into Frances Hodgson Burnett, say. XD Sames goes for Robert Graves, who was my intro to Greek mythology.)

Also watched about 20 episodes of Monster (to 56, the last I downloaded - DON'T TELL ME WHAT HAPPENS). People keep telling me that travelling in Europe for the first time must be a life-changing experience; I'm not sure if it is in the way they mean (to me it seems more like it dusted off the interests I had pre-animanga), but it does have the effect of making my viewing of Monster much more immediate. ^^; Instead of treating the background as er well the background to whatever's happening, I find myself looking at Dusseldorf or Prague through tourist eyes and going Oh hey trams! Church steeples! Market squares haha I bet that's a tourist trap. Unless I'm staring at Johan's legs instead. There's a cakewalk in the awful fascination category: mother/sister complex is all very well but Norman Bates wasn't convincing under good lighting, and a million fanficcers are desolate that Sephiroth never tried to dress up as Jenova... or on second thought, not.

I had ill-formed thoughts on how Monster is not unlike a Dickens novel at heart despite its post-Cold War thriller meet serial killer horror trappings, but this entry's reached its preciosity quota. XD I think I'm the only one "following" the anime at this point anyway, everyone I knew who cared read the whole series in manga as soon as it became available.

Comments

[petronia.livejournal.com]

I'd actually like to track down her attacks on the Roman de la Rose I learnt about by reading the introduction, that sounds like right proper meta for the ages. XD

[angrybabble.livejournal.com]

I'm still watching Monster too! Actually I'm around the 20-ep mark as well, so I was pleased that you're not any further. XD

Answer your e-mail ^^;;;;

[iatros.livejournal.com]

Hey there...up for catching up? Check your e-mail ^_^;;

:-| ???

[(Anonymous)]

so if i read this correctly, travelling europe wasn't a life CHanging expeRience beyond the fact that It changed the way you look at Some television show? isn't that.... depressing?

Re: :-| ???

[petronia.livejournal.com]

Not really? I just mean the changes are more subtle. XD Methinks I'm too old (and have too much previous knowledge, to be honest) for it to be utterly mindblowing in that way. Or maybe I'd have to go stand under the Sistine Chapel in Rome.